Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Obama pushing for a new United Nations climate agreement

Commentary by James Shott

The United Nations has scheduled a meeting in Paris to
discuss climate change, with a new international global warming agreement
involving more than 190 countries as its goal. The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, starting November
30 and running to December 11, will be the 21st yearly session of the
Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties to
the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The objective is to create a legally binding and universal
agreement on climate, and the Obama administration has submitted
a plan for a new deal consisting of national
contributions to curb emissions that would alter the 20-year-old Kyoto
Protocol distinctions between the obligations of rich and poor
nations.

The U.S. plan depends on individual countries enforcing their
own emissions reductions, and the countries that agree to the plan would be
required to set new targets to lower their carbon emissions after 2020. And rich
nations like the U.S. and Japan will be held to the same legal requirements as
China, India and other fast-developing nations.

This all sounds wonderful, if you believe in manmade global
warming/climate change; one-world government; the US making more reductions
before China and India – the really big polluters – do; and the Easter Bunny.

Why would China or India voluntarily reduce their emissions
when doing so would stop their development or severely hamper it? And, can the
world trust both countries to honestly report their emissions? Just recently, The Guardian published evidence that
China has already been deceiving the world on its coal burning carbon emissions,
even before this new agreement is finalized.

At a meeting in Bonn last month to discuss a draft agreement
a bitter fight developed over the degree to which countries of the world should
cut their greenhouse gas emissions, how much time they will have to complete
those cuts, and who will pay for the transition.

Some provisions of the draft require the complete
decarbonization of the global economy by 2050, and that rich countries like the
U.S. get to pay more than $100 billion per year after 2020 to compensate poor
countries for supposed climate change damages and help them adopt non-carbon producing
energy sources.

The basis for this stepped up attack on fossil fuel use is
the old story that human activities cause climate change, and global warming is
responsible for so much harm, like Al Gore’s shrinking Arctic ice cap that was
supposed to disappear by 2014 (the Arctic still has a large ice cap and the
Antarctic cap has grown), rising global temperatures (that haven’t risen since 1998
in the U.S.), too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (which makes plants
grow and produce oxygen for us to breathe) and the rest of the more than 700
things attributed to global warming, as compiled by the British-based science
watchdog, Number Watch.

California Democrat Rep. Barbara Lee and several other
Democrats believe that if substantial reductions in CO2 emissions aren’t made
soon then droughts and reduced agricultural output may force women to turn to “transactional
sex” (once known as “prostitution”) to survive. Seriously.

A consortium of environmental activist organizations released
a report titled “Fair Shares” which concludes: “Nothing less than a systemic
transformation of our societies and our economies will suffice to solve the
climate crisis."

Since President Barack Obama is totally on board with this
concept he has already implemented his own “climate action plan.” Thus, the
theory goes, the U.S. would not need congressional approval to implement the U.N.
agreement, since it’s already being done through executive orders.

Which, of course, means that Obama intends to ignore the
constitutional role of Congress. Again.

“So this is just the latest example of President Obama’s
contempt for obeying the Constitution and our laws,” Myron Ebell, director of
the Center of Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
(CEI), told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “In the past, rulers who act as
if the law does not apply to them were called tyrants,” he noted.

The U.S. Constitution says that the president “shall have
Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate” to make treaties with
other countries. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol had to be ratified by Congress, but it
never was, even though the Clinton administration signed onto it. This
agreement, too, is a treaty, and it requires Senate approval.

“CEI has warned for several years that the Obama
Administration would follow advice from environmental pressure groups and try
to sign a new U.N. agreement that ignores the Senate’s constitutional role,”
Ebell said.

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee called the plan ambitious and
cynical because it “is an attempt to enshrine in an international agreement
President Obama’s unilateral environmental regulatory regime, which remains
deeply unpopular among the American people.”

Opponents also point out that this agreement will not take effect
until after Obama leaves office, so he won’t have to deal with the damage it
causes. However, if it does not receive ratification by the Senate making it a
treaty, it is only an agreement, and therefore can easily be cancelled by the
new president.

Update February 9, 2009: The worldwide financial crisis has made it harder on banks and credit card companies are facing rising delinquency...

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